Market Forces: A Novel

MARKET FORCES by Richard K. Morgan is brilliant and brutal, a near-future SF thriller about businessmen who manage wars (backing the side who they think will earn them the most profit if victorious) and climb the corporate ladder by killing off their competition in gladiatorial car duels.

This book is not only as good as his two previous novels, it's better; in fact, it's the best SF book of the 21st century so far, if you ask me. It reads as if it were written by Harlan Ellison channeling Chuck Palaniuk or Bret Easton Ellis.

First off - I truly enjoyed Altered Carbon and Broken Angels - superb, dense, pieces of hard sci fi that were hard to put down.
I didn't like this book and could barely finish it. The storyline was predictable, the writing was below Morgan's usual standard and the political analysis was simplistic to say the least.
This actually is not a sci fi book at all but a polemic. The author should spare us the warmed over Chomsky and stick to the far future. I look forward to a return to form.

I ususally persevere to the end of whatever I pick up to read. I very much enjoyed Morgan's two previous books, with Altered Carbon, the 1st one, the better of the two. I saw the recent NY Times Review of Books review of this work and immediately looked forward to more entertainment from an author I've liked in the past.

I got through over 300 pages of this more than 400 page book, and stopped. I say 'got through' because it wasn't entertaining after the initial exposition of the theme. This might have been a decent read at 200 pages.

I love the philosophical angles of all 4 of Morgan's books that I've read, but I really had trouble believing the world of Market Forces. While the Kovacs novels draw on hard boiled themes and technological horrors, Market Forces seemed to be half Michael Moore, half Fast and the Furious.

Love the premise, but the action doesn't grab me. Definitely give it a try if you like his other stuff, but don't let it burn you to the point of missing the Kovacs novels!

i've read Altered Carbon and Broken Angels expecting something along the same lines, but i was pleasantly surprised when i read Market Forces. The characters have a lot of depth to them, making me care alot more about the story than if it were mere rock'em-sock'em-sci-fi. Morgan brings in a ton of influences and insights on this one, almost causing me to wonder if there was more than a slice of his own life in this one. pick it up!

The premise sounded good. Investment bankers who invest in little wars around the globe. They do research on each side, run statistical analyses, and decide who is more likely to win. They give their investors' money to the faction they're backing, and when the war is over and their side is now in charge, the company gets a percentage of that country's GDP, which makes money for their clients. I can see that happening someday. We're well on our way.

What I can NOT see happening are government-sanctioned death matches on PUBLIC roadways. It's absurd. I might even be able to suspend disbelief enough to agree that maybe it could be legal for these "negotiations" to take place on a private course somewhere. But on the freeway? No way. Today, even voluntary euthanasia is illegal in all but two countries (Belgium and Netherlands). Private citizens in Great Britain aren't even allowed to own guns. It's too big a leap to tell me that in this near-future, it's completely legal to run someone off the road and shoot them to death while they're driving to work. Morgan offers a flimsy reasoning for the whole situation, by saying that in order for these brokers to earn the right to risk other people's lives, they have to risk their own lives. But that's just not the way the world works. The CEO of Colt firearms doesn't have to go head to head in a deathmatch against Springfield and H&K for the contract to provide M-16s to the military. The negotiators with American General didn't have to kill the negotiators from Jeep in order to replace Jeeps with Hummers. And if they did, they certainly couldn't have done it on Interstate 95.

It seems to me that Richard Morgan has an obsession with fast cars, and he was looking for a way to work it into a story. He should have found another way to do it. He ruined a solid concept about corporate greed (and the ways that greed can shape world events) by trying to turn it into The Running Man. I got halfway through the book, and then it just became too stupid to go on wasting my time with it.

Quite different from the previous Kovacs-books in setting, its world-view is the same: Dark and cynical. If you hang up in the details, of course you may find parts of the story unrealistic, but still close enough to the world of today to make you recognize its relevance. This is after all fiction, not documentary. I was specially impressed by the way the development of the main character in the book is described as the story unfolds: A lot of people having worked hard to achieve something in a dog eats dog world, can easily relate to it. The corporate world and ethics defined in the book is barely a small step away, in fact, the very same, just laid out in a more explicit and morbid fashion. All in all a great read!

This book blew through me like a hurricane! What would the future look like if warlords took over the first world? Well maybe they already do. OK then, what would the future look like if warlords ran the first world and didn't care who knew it?

The character development is put together with loving care until the protagonist trys to pull his way off the page. Careful research into unfettered capitalism shows a very possible world. Executives have gone beyond office politics right to road-rage legal killing! Thinking outside the box might mean beating your client to death with a baseball bat! It sounds farfetched but given the recent surreal nature of the headlines, somehow it all starts to make sense.

This story will reach down and grab you by the short ones and make you howl at the moon.

Ever wonder what the Grapes of Wrath would have been like if one of the Joad men had stopped whining and got a job as a tractor driver-so he could feed his family, keep the farm and be something other than an-oh-so noble economic failure? Here's the answer.

I just finished listening to Market Forces. Ironically, I've also recently seen Revenge of Sith and listened to the unabridged audiobook version and what strikes me is how clearly and incredibly believable this character's temptations and choices were in comparison to the forced plotting of the Lucas' work. You actually see a good man be tempted and you're with him every step of the way.

I think what people are characterizing as slow is actually the necessary character development to avoid the Look-I'm-a-Bad-Guy-all-the-sudden feeling that's a source of such dissappointment in Revenge of the Sith.

Everything about the story is true on the character level. The speculative characteristic of the future world are unique and are based in fair more logic than used for Logan's Run and Star Wars, although not as much as such Sci-Fi, distopia classic as Brave New World or Atlas Shrugged.

As I listened I also could not help but think of Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson, but where as Stephenson's future is built on a sort of world economic equality that manages to hurt every nation, Morgan's future is focused on a concentration of western wealth that's then concentrated in the corporate sector even further.

Ayn Rand fans/believers will, of course, be offended to some degree as capitalism is tied to violence in a very heavy handed fashion, as if the two are one in the same-WHICH THEY ARE NOT. Also, socialist, nanny states are given a kind of moral superiority more fitting in a Steinbeck novel than in cyber-punk like science fiction, but that's politics.

As an entertaining story of a good man tempted to go bad in a world where corporate culture has gone mad, this is definitely one book worth reading or hearing.

Wow, very dark, super bleak sci-fi from this promising author. This is globalization gone horribly wrong. The book was maybe 50-75 pages longer than it had to be, but I highly recommend it nonetheless.

I was very hopeful about Market Forces as I really enjoyed Morgan's Takeshi Kovacs novels. But I was stunned by just how terrible this book was. I literally thought the whole thing was a joke, and read through the first few chapters hoping he would start the "real" story. The premise and plot make absolutely no sense. This "investment" firm hires stunt drivers who earn their reputation by killing each other in car races. They have no actual investment skills, and how the firm actually makes any money is never explained (at least not before I could no longer stand to read). It almost seemed that the whole book was slapped together by a 12 year-old writing under Morgan's name. Do yourself a favor and don't waste your time or money on this one.

I loved "Altered Carbon" (I constantly suggest it to friends) and thought "Broken Angels" was OK (not as good as the first but a decent sophomore effort, stupid twist at the end aside), but this was just a big disappointment. Heavy-handed social commentary masquerading as 3rd-rate science fiction - I should, perhaps, know better than to buy fiction that has a 'suggested reading' post-script, much less one that features Chomsky and Michael Moore. The cutesy bit where the protagonist ends up reading Morgan's first book really pushed me over the edge.

Avoid this if you liked "Altered Carbon" and pray Morgan can re-find his groove.

Considering how much fun his first two books were, this pointless violence, sex, drinking and machismo bored me so much I dropped the book halfway through. What happened to this guy? Did success make him write this in a hurry to please his publisher? Man, this book has no real plot except to drive, drink, f**k and write some of the worst prose in the English language. I hope #4 is better but I'll try a library copy first......

Totally un-realistic and unbelievable story, characters lacking any interest, full of clichés, my guess is that most of the good reviews were based on biased opinions made out of this book synopsis, not from actual readers.

Alternatively, thriller for politically correct readers having never read a thriller.

For all the others, go back to effective and well written social thrillers like those of Raymond Chandler, Jim Thomson, Chester Himes, James Crumley etc.

This book blew through me like a hurricane! What would the future look like if warlords took over the first world? Well maybe they already do. OK then, what would the future look like if warlords ran the first world and didn't care who knew it?

The character development is put together with loving care until the protagonist trys to pull his way off the page. Careful research into unfettered capitalism shows a very possible world. Executives have gone beyond office politics right to road-rage legal killing! Thinking outside the box might mean beating your client to death with a baseball bat! It sounds farfetched but given the recent surreal nature of the headlines, somehow it all starts to make sense.

This story will reach down and grab you by the short ones and make you howl at the moon.